“I told you, this happens all the time. She’ll be okay in a couple of minutes. It’s like an epileptic seizure or something.” Jane looked at me curiously. “What did she say to you?”
I couldn’t figure out how to tell her, so I just drank my beer and said nothing. Probably a mistake.
Jane was right—it took a couple of minutes, but Miranda’s eyes fluttered open, blank and unfocused, and she struggled to sit up in Guy’s arms. He held on for a second, then let go. She scrambled away and sat in the far corner of the van, next to the empty bottles, with her hands over her head. Jane sighed, handed me her beer, and crawled over to whisper with her sister and stroke her hair.
“Well,” Trent said. “Guess the emergency’s over. Beer?”
“No,” I said, and drained my last bottle. I was feeling loose and sparkly, and I was going to be seriously sorry in the morning—oh, it was morning. Like, about three a.m. Great. “I need to get home, Trent.”
“But the night’s barely late-middle-age!”
“Sunrise in three hours. I don’t want to meet Brandon drunk off my ass.”
“Might improve—okay, fine.” Trent shot me a resentful look, and jerked his head to Guy. “Help me drive, okay?”
“You’re driving?” Guy looked alarmed. Trent had downed lots of beer. Lots. He didn’t seem to be feeling it, and it wasn’t like we had far to go, but . . . yeah. Still, I didn’t feel capable, and Guy looked even more bleary. Jane . . . Well, she hadn’t been far behind Trent in the Drunk-Ass Sweepstakes, either.
And letting a fourteen-year-old epileptic have the wheel wasn’t a better solution.
“Not like we can walk,” I said reluctantly. “Look, drive slow, okay? Slow and careful.”
Trent shot me a crisp OK sign and saluted. He didn’t look drunk. I swallowed hard and crawled back to sit with Jane and Miranda. “We’re going home,” I said. “Guess you guys get dropped off first, right? Then me?”
Miranda nodded. “Sit here,” she said. “Right here.” She patted the carpet next to her.
I rolled my eyes. “Comfy here, thanks.”
“No! Sit here!”
I looked at Jane and frowned. “Are you sure she’s okay?” And made a little not-so-subtle loopy-loop at my temple.
“Yeah, she’s fine.” Jane sighed. “She’s been getting these visions again. Most of the time they’re bullshit, though. I think she just does it for the attention.”
Jane was looking put out, and I guess she had reason. If Miranda was this much fun at parties, I could only imagine what a barrel of laughs she was at home.
Miranda was getting more and more upset. Jane gave her a ferocious frown and said, “Oh, God. Just do it, Eve. I don’t want her having another fit or something.”
I crawled across Miranda and wedged myself uncomfortably into the corner where she indicated. Yeah, this was great. At least it was going to be a short drive.
It was what was waiting at the end of it that I was afraid of. Brandon. Decisions. The beginning of my adult life.
Trent started the van and pulled a tight U-turn out of the high school parking lot. There were no side windows, but out of the back windows I saw the big, hulking thirties-era building with its Greek columns fading away like a ghost into the night. Morganville wasn’t big on streetlights, although there were a crapload of surveillance cameras. The cops knew where we’d been. They knew everything in Morganville, and half of them were vampires.
God, I couldn’t wait to apply for my paperwork to get the hell out, but in order to do that, I needed an acceptance letter to an out-of-state university, or waivers from the mayor’s office. I wasn’t likely to get either one, with my grades and ’tude. No, I was a lifer, stuck in Morganville, watching the world go by.
At least, until somebody cut me out of the herd and I became a Snack Pack.
Trent was driving faster than we’d agreed. Not only that, the van was veering a little to the side of the road. “Yo, T.!” I yelled. “Eyes front, man!”
He turned to look back at me, and his pupils were huge and dark, and he giggled, and I had time to think, Oh shit, he’s not drunk—he’s high, and then he hit the gas.
Miranda’s hand closed over my arm. I looked at her, and she was crying. “I don’t want them to die,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Oh Jesus, Mir, would you stop?” Jane said, and smacked her hand away. “Drama princess.”
But I was looking at Miranda, and she was staring at me, and she slowly nodded her head.
“Here it comes,” she said, and transferred the stare to her sister. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
And then something bad happened, and the world ended.
? ? ?
I walked away from the smoking wreckage. Staggered, actually, coughing and carrying the limp body of Miranda; she was alive, bleeding from the head but still alive.
My brain wouldn’t bring up anything about Trent, Jane, or Guy. Nothing. It just . . . refused.